Denise Richards & Her Wild Things Recap: Reality Bites

When I saw that the new episode of Denise Richards & Her Wild Things is called “My Dinner With Charlie,” I was hoping for an installment that truly captured the spirit of My Dinner With Andre, the film that it’s referencing. We don’t quite get two hours of the titular meal, but I will give the show credit for recognizing the significance of getting Charlie Sheen to participate — this is his first reality-show appearance, if you can believe that — and devoting almost the whole episode to the main event. Very little actually happens, of course, because the series is determined to remain as cheery and drama free as possible, but it’s certainly more dynamic than filming a Patrick Muldoon music video.

Before we can get to Charlie, we’ve got Denise’s anniversary dinner with Aaron. They’ve been together for eight years and married for six — we get a flashback to their Real Housewives of Beverly Hills wedding — and we once again have to hear about how the first thing Denise noticed about Aaron was his penis in his jeans. I really cannot tell you how tired I am of hearing about Aaron’s genitalia. Unless he wants to start his own OnlyFans, it is simply none of my business, and it comes up with alarming frequency. I just survived a season of hearing about John Janssen’s junk on The Real Housewives of Orange County, and I’m close to filing a complaint. The rest of the dinner is perfectly fine. Denise notes that she and Aaron love and respect each other, which was not the case in her last marriage.

They do a lot of talking about her ex, frankly far more than is appropriate for an anniversary dinner with a current partner. But this is the Charlie episode — it makes sense that we have to revisit the fact that she left him when she was pregnant with Lola. I do feel as though we keep hearing the same stories over and over again, so I was excited for a new morsel of information, as Denise recalls seeing a couples therapist (found by Charlie’s lawyer!) who ultimately dropped them both as clients and pulled Denise aside to tell her, “If you stay with him, you are going to have to have therapy every day for the rest of your life.” More of this, please! It’s great that the two of them have figured out how to repair their relationship, but he was such a toxic and corrosive force in her life, and it feels important to always keep that front of mind. I get the sense that Aaron does, based on his assessment: “Life is short, and you don’t need tiger blood to do it.”

Back home at one of the townhouses, Denise tells Lola that her dad wants to have lunch with them and that Sami won’t be coming. We don’t get much of an explanation for this except for Denise’s vague “The girls have been through a lot with their dad — it has been up and down.” I have no doubt that that’s true, but when Sami, in a confessional, says, “I would rather do literally anything else than go to lunch with my father,” I’d love to know why. Was it a condition of Charlie appearing that the show wouldn’t delve any deeper into his estrangement from one of his daughters? Later on, Sami clarifies that her relationship with her dad ebbs and flows and they haven’t spoken in the past five months. She and Denise agree in a joint confessional that it’s his loss. That makes it sound as if Charlie is the one who pulled back from communication, all while getting regular pedicures with Lola. I remain frustrated by the way Denise Richards & Her Wild Things glosses over these things — what’s really going on here?

That having been said, the lunch itself is nice. It’s genuinely wild to see Charlie, and not just because he’s had some work done and it’s given him a slight uncanny-valley sheen (no pun intended). He seems healthy and happy, and, as he points out, this is a real milestone for the reality-TV virgin. RHOBH wanted him to appear, but he hadn’t watched the show. In fact, he just saw it for the first time a few days prior, when he caught the cease-and-desist fight between Denise and Lisa Rinna on TV. (He says he didn’t have enough context to pick a side, but he went with Denise by default, which is kind.) As Charlie notes, the Sheen-Richards family will not be having that kind of a Housewives sit-down, and while I didn’t expect anything nearly as brutal as Rinna’s “You’re so angry,” we could probably use a bit of conflict here.

Instead, Lola and her parents make small talk about dating. Lola has never been on a real date and has had trouble connecting with guys because she’s worried they might just be Charlie Sheen stans. She mentions one potential boyfriend who she discovered had a poster of her dad on his wall. (She doesn’t say if it was just of him or of one of his movies, and I’m really hoping it was Hot Shots! Part Deux.) Charlie brings up the then-current E. coli scare surrounding carrots before assuring his family that he has survived much worse things. “When he was going on tour with the goddesses and all that, I don’t think he was really a germophobe back then,” says Denise, a person who is clearly no longer mad about anything!

Eventually, we get into the serious stuff, which is mostly Denise reiterating that even through the worst times in their divorce, she always had Charlie’s back. Charlie says “Cool,” and I feel visceral anger thinking about everything he put her and her kids through. If she has moved on, fine, but there are enough flashes of resentment that prove that’s likely not the case. After Lola calls her parents “superstars” (generous but, again, kind), she reveals that she’s afraid of being famous. Charlie says the trick is to not look at what people are saying about you, which is sound advice. In a confessional, Denise points out the irony of his statement, given all the horrible things he tweeted about her. The show flashes a headline of a Father’s Day Twitter rant that I’d successfully repressed, so I went ahead and looked it up. Horrific stuff! A sample: “Denise Richards is a shake down piece of shit doosh phace & worse mom alive! A despicable charlatan who sux ISIs ass.”

What are we meant to make of Charlie Sheen in the context of this show? The message that keeps getting hammered home is that they’re a crazy family who somehow make it work, but I’m just not that convinced. For me, the highlight of the episode is Denise’s confessional monologue at the end, because it feels like her truly dropping the façade. “I never had to say anything bad about Charlie — he spiraled,” she shares. “I took in his boys. I didn’t publicly say I did. I was in the tabloids all the time, and it got to a point where I had to literally put myself basically in a bubble.” She breaks down as she remembers the lowest point of her life. Look, I don’t need to see Denise crying for her show to be good — I sincerely want her to be happy! — but vulnerability and honesty are so much more compelling than Charlie telling Denise and Lola that he adores them both. It’s wonderful that he does. After the show dangled the E. coli–ridden carrot of his estrangement from Sami, however, it’s hard not to think about the story we’re not seeing.